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Friday, October 24, 2008

Commitment

Time: 5:48 pm - Go!

I sit and open up the email from Patty. LA Skins Festival, cool. I know my movie is playing there, when, I wonder, the producers haven't contacted me yet to tell me when. I check the schedule, look there we are. I scroll thru the list of movies. Check out all these Indians out there making movies. WTF, this is BFE Canada and they're making movies, I fuckin' live in L.A. and I don't make movies. Oh, check that scenario out, how can a film about a father being deported be included in this festival? DEPORTED, are you kidding me. You are American Indian, you can't be deported, so how do you have the audacity to submit your film to this festival, you are not American Indian. I don't get it. OK, here I am again defending something I so want to be a part of, yet am not. I kinda feel like the geeky girl in school who would stand by the cool kids and pick up their scraps (metaphorically of course). I want so much to be Indian and am, but I don't feel like it.

Growing up, I was the overly tanned kid in all the class photos, the dark kid with the round face and eyes dark as coal, with crater deep dimples. Looking back on my class photos now I notice who I stand out, but then, I was just another kid, these were my friends and no one thought anything of it. Some may think that growing up in a small town limits you, like you are going to be singled out because of your differences, but that was never the case. It wasn't until I moved away from home, that I realized how different I was, and what the world would dish out. I am fortunate enough to meet people who know about their culture and heritage, I know nothing, safe a few choice "swears" in Ojibwa. I feel left out. I want to learn more, but how, isn't it too late? and why is it that I think these people are less Indian than I am? Well it's because they're out there doing stuff and I am not. I have this need for perfection and don't want to get anything wrong, what if I misrepresented something, and feel this backlash then they'd kick me out of the club for sure and then tear up my treaty card for sure.

Fear stops me at every turn. Just go and do, who cares. I just wish someone would help me. So I could share my failure when it happens. Note the when not if. I really am trying to be positive, but it scares the fuck out of me.

I don't want someone to be more Indian than me, I want to be the biggest and best Indian out there. I have to be the best, that's all there is to it and if I'm not I will die alone, friendless, with the priest letting the stragglers who just happen to be in the church while my funeral is going on, what a major flop I made and what a failure I was.

Ooooh poor me, poor me, no one loves me, I'm a loser, I suck, I will never amount to anything, I don't have any friends, I will never amount to anything, I will never accomplish anything great, I will just move through existence merely being, not accomplishing anything. No one will remember me, no one will want to, they will all thought that I died years earlier than I did. I will be alone with my turtle, because cats are for the pathetic and I am better than that, who will outlive me and I will have no one to will him too, so when I die alone in my apartment, G2 (my turtle) will wander our apartment until the smell is finally noticed by the neighbors, or the landlord comes and pounds on the door because I haven't paid my rent. My epitaph will read - she died alone, unloved and was nothing.